Being Kiwi

The combination of a new puppy in the family (relentless!) and the fact that my guest blogger today, Adam Jones-Kelly, is a wonderful writer, blogger and world traveler (since he was seven years old) has me handing over the helm of my blog yet again this week. For my readers who are drawn to all the travel-love I often indulge in here—plus any Kiwis in the group!—today’s post will be a total delight. I encourage you to follow Adam’s blog at OnSite: Eating, Sleeping & Coping Around the World. He really has a razor sharp take on the places he visits—always spot-on, VERY funny and insightful—and his photos are stellar. I’m partial to his Kiwi post, presented here, because of my love affair with that country. His photos in this post, fairly recently taken, had me fumbling for my Amex card until my husband reminded me of the likely effects of taking a puppy that hasn’t been housetrained yet on a 16-hour Air New Zealand flight. Enjoy!

Brendan Gill once wrote “Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.”
The Kiwis were apparently paying attention.
New Zealanders are an irreverent bunch, playful, adventurous, and happy, quite possibly the happiest people I’ve ever known. Kiwis don’t just live life, they attack it, with a wink and a grin.

Rangitoto volcano across from Auckland Harbour

The approach to the world’s highest cliff jump has a couple of somber warnings for wary visitors, carefully placed along the gravely walkway.
This is not surprising, since one side of the walkway is a sheer cliff, off which you’d enjoy a 300-foot plummet before face-planting into the canyon below at 100 miles per hour.
What is surprising is that the signs neglect to mention the certain and painful death lurking mere inches away, instead alerting passersby to be on careful lookout for gnomes.
Life here is not real serious.
My favorite all-time Kiwi billboard was selling itself, and proudly proclaimed that it “Stands out like dog’s balls.”
I love Kiwis.
Before leaving Queenstown we all agreed that a ride on the Skyline Gondola to the top of Bob’s Peak was in order, and a visit to Fergberger a must.
So, still peeling so extravagantly from my Bora Bora sunburn that I looked like a leper begging for coins, we queued up for the five minute ride up the mountain. Though shedding skin in such profusion does garner you a great deal of personal space, the line was long, so Soo and I amused ourselves by peeling large flakes off my arm and depositing them at the feet of horrified tourists.
Once to the top we quickly forgot all thoughts of tormenting fellow travelers, so magnificent were the vistas on display as Queenstown spread out before us, enveloped by the majestic snow-capped peaks of the Southern Alps and kissing the shore of Lake Wakatipu.
It’s catch-your-breath beautiful, and we happily settled in at the bar at the Skyline restaurant to enjoy a drink while staring out the window. (The restaurant itself is a buffet, allegedly a really poor one, and costs a fortune. We failed to come up with any reason to eat there since lounging in the bar area afforded you the same views.)
That out of the way, our last Queenstown must-do was lunch at Fergberger. The hole-in-the-wall joint making the biggest, juciest burgers you’ve ever seen, started a decade ago because the owner, Ferg, believed that locals deserved a spot to eat when they were “drunk to hell.” Their website pleasantly notes that in the early days the restaurant was guilty of swapping “chips for tits.” Ah, Kiwis.
There’s always a line out the door, and once having ordered it takes 20 minutes to get your burger, but it’s mouth-watering oh-so-worth-it deliciousness. Among my favorite menu items are the Sweet Bambi, the Cockadoodle Oink, the Holier Than Thou, the Bun Laden (falafel, of course) and the Cock Cajun burger, which apparently has nothing to do with sex, though after eating one you’ll need a cigarette. I sure did.
We unhappily departed Queenstown on Air New Zealand. (Unhappily because we were leaving, not because we were on Air New Zealand. It is, in fact, one of the world’s top-rated airlines, winning the 2011 Air Transport World’s Airline of the Year award for the second time in three years, but one that, being Kiwi, doesn’t take itself too seriously. And it’s perhaps the only airline on earth capable of convincing me to pay attention to the here’s how you fasten your seat belt, put on your life vest and find the emergency exit in the unlikely event of a water landing routine. Air New Zealand accomplished this by presenting the airline safety features in a video that incorporates Richard Simmons, 70s dance music, flight crew in nothing but body paint and the members of the national rugby team.)
It’s hysterical, completely endearing and utterly Kiwi.
The first few minutes of our flight, however, were less endearing.
My wonderful friend Jo is one of those people practiced at supervising everything around her, even those things that don’t really require supervision. The pilots on our flight unhelpfully declined to allow Jo to manage things from the cockpit, so she was left to fret about how they were doing in the back with the rest of us.

The author with a few of the 40 million sheep that make NZ home!

Regrettably, they gave us plenty to fret about for the first few minutes.
It was terribly turbulent upon takeoff, apparently not uncommon for this little corner of the world. (Airfare Watchdog’s list of The World’s Most Thrilling Airports puts Queenstown #2, noting that “Queenstown… lies below The Remarkables, a jagged mountain range seen in The Lord of the Rings. On descent, passengers may feel a sudden drop in altitude caused by strong downdrafts. Bird activity by the runway, as well as frequent bad weather and poor visibility, also make Queenstown Airport a real knee-knocker.”)
On takeoff, we got the sudden drop.
The pilot, to his credit, was racing for higher altitudes, trying to get us out of the chop. But before he could get there we hit one of those downdrafts, and the plane plummeted. Screams could be heard from passengers all around us, and poor Jo, who’d brought two of her daughters on the trip, but left her eldest, Amy, behind in Auckland due to work constraints, was utterly convinced we were all going to die. Jo touchingly and tragically later shared that her one thought in the panic of the drop was that she was heartbroken to leave Amy alone in the world.
As you will have deduced by the existence of this blog, the pilots recovered, and we made it to Auckland just fine. I do think they distributed a wee bit more alcohol on that flight than is usual, however.
Auckland, where I lived as a child, is probably my favorite city on earth. Not because it’s beautiful in the way Paris or Venice are beautiful, and not because it’s exciting in the way Queensland was. (It is beautiful, this city of sails, and of course has its own brand of excitement. But that’s not what you take away from Auckland. It’s the feel of the city, the very Kiwiness, that makes it my favorite.)
When we first lived here 30 years ago my father used to rail at the impossibility of finding decent Chinese food anywhere in Auckland. Now, half the restaurants in town are Asian, and they’re scrumptiously authentic.The city has changed, but it’s still Auckland. There’s still a family-owned fish & chippery on every corner, still a quaint dairy for every neighborhood. (A dairy in NZ is part convenience store and part old rural country store from our parents‘ early years. And they always have fresh, delicious ice-cream.)
On a typical Sunday afternoon in Auckland, the shopping malls are empty, the harbor full of sails. The landscape is dotted with extinct volcanoes, everywhere you look people are smiling and laughing, and it just feels like… home.
It occurs to me that so much of who I am today was shaped by New Zealand. For the past three decades, most of which I spent living in America, I’ve been busily being Kiwi, though I’m not sure I ever realized it.
And that’s made my life ever so much more fun. I’m so grateful for that part of me that never stopped being Kiwi.

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6 Comments

Wonderful post Mr. Jones-Kelly. I’ll be adding this to the list of places I have to visit when I finally get the chance to live like the globe trotting ex-pat I want to be when I grow up. Great post. I did have one quick question, what other ways would there be for a person, whose really not that happy about flying, to get to Queenstown? Preferably one that didn’t involve a cross country foot race similar to LoTR, lol…

Great post – pretty much sums up the Kiwi sense of humour. Irreverent and dryly laconic. There’s a lot of it in Peter Jackson’s movies, if you know where to look (check out ‘dwarf tossing’ in Two Towers, for instance). Mostly a consequence of the Maori infusion into our culture, I think.

Weirdly, the last Air New Zealand flight I took included a crew who’d appeared on that safety video. Fortunately they were wearing clothes this time.

Queenstown’s a horrendous airport to fly in and out of, but not as bad as Wellington which regularly gets YouTube compilations of its hairy crosswind landings. Queenstown itself’s accessible by road, some hours drive from Dunedin or Invercargill. Worth it for the drive through the scenery. There’s also a lot else to see besides the main tourist spots – Wellington, the picturesque capital; lonely Mount Taranaki; Nelson with its wonderful climate; Lake Taupo with its thermal region; the rugged West Coast, the Southern Alps, and Napier – the art deco capital of the world. Seriously, it’s like stepping into a 1930s cinema set when ‘art deco week’ gets going.

Those Auckland volcanoes…how can I put it? Not extinct. The city’s built atop a lava pool and the likelihood of a new one exploding into life is pretty high, sooner or later. It’s (sort of) why I live in Wellington…

When I lived in NZ in the mid-eighties I often flew back and forth between Auckland and Wellington b/c my agency had clients down there and it was easier to move the writer/producer about than the client (plus we shot in Wellington a lot b/c it’s so gorgeous…although throw a rock any place in NZ and you’re going to get relentless beauty unmatched anywhere in the world IMHO.) I was young enough to be thrilled with the runway at the Wellington airport and had many exciting take offs and landings there. (Today, I’m sure I’d have to be sedated.)

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